Creative Practice Research: Interrogating creativity theories through documentary practice

Abstract

This paper presents research into creative practice that broadens understandings of theories about creativity by investigating a practitioner’s agency through documentary production practice. The primary theory used to interrogate my self-reflective process-based research into documentary creativity is ‘The System’s Model of Creativity’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). This paper will provide a brief summary of the findings of a larger research project investigating my documentary creative practice, while also presenting an alternative way of using theory about creativity to interrogate the complex internalised layering that is creative practice. Discussion of my creative documentary practice research identifies internalized and embodied knowledge and the acquisition of externalized knowledge, both of which were acquired and consequently embodied during the production of two oral history documentaries. This primarily systemic approach to creativity research may be useful to other researchers as this particular creativity theory is generic and should, therefore, transcend form and content.